OpenAI released its latest language model, GPT-5, last week, which the company says is significantly better than previous models in areas like accuracy, reasoning, health, and multimodal abilities. However, Nick Turley, Head of ChatGPT, believes the AI chatbot should still be used as a second opinion and not as a primary source of information.
In a recent conversation with The Verge, Turley was asked about the continuing problem of hallucination (AI making things up) with GPT-5. While OpenAI claims to have made huge strides in reducing hallucinations, the new model is still prone to errors roughly 10% of the time.
Speaking about the persistent challenge, Turley said, “The thing, though, with reliability is that there’s a strong discontinuity between very reliable and 100 percent reliable, in terms of the way that you conceive of the product.”
“Until I think we are provably more reliable than a human expert on all domains, not just some domains, I think we’re going to continue to advise you to double check your answer. I think people are going to continue to leverage ChatGPT as a second opinion, versus necessarily their primary source of fact,” he added.
Notably, large language models are trained to predict the next likely word based on patterns in their training datasets. This means that when asked about information outside their training data, LLMs often produce plausible-sounding but false answers.
Turley acknowledged the problem but stressed that ChatGPT works best when paired with external, verifiable sources like a search engine. “I still believe that, no question, the right product is LLMs connected to ground truth, and that’s why we brought search to ChatGPT and I think that makes a huge difference.”
The OpenAI executive further expressed optimism about solving hallucinations: “I’m confident we’ll eventually solve hallucinations, and I’m confident we’re not going to do it in the next quarter.”
Notably, OpenAI is also reportedly working on developing its browser and the company’s CEO Sam Altman recently said in an interview that it is interested in buying Google’s Chrome browser if Google is forced to sell its prized possession.
